Last Moments
by Tegaladwen
Summary: What does it feel like to die? What changes does your body go through? What emotions do you experience? Henry Morgan has lived the answers to these questions, all too many times. And last moments are both better and worse than could ever be imagined. One-shot. Takes place after a random death of Henry's. Jo/Henry friendship, unless you'd like to read it as otherwise.


_A/N: The idea for the first paragraph of this fic came to me last night at about 1 am. An hour later, this one-shot appeared. This fic is mainly a study of death, in a way, and my take on last moments._

_Disclaimer: Forever isn't mine, and neither is Henry Morgan (stunning, right?)._

_Pairing: __I consider Jo and Henry to be just friends, but the description and word choice I used in this could easily be seen as romantic if you choose to see it that way :)_

_Warnings: Talk of death, I suppose, although I am absolutely no expert whatsoever. This concept came entirely from my own mind._

_I hope you like it! :)_

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It's amazing, the things one thinks about while dying. Car crash victims will run their fingers through the snow with their broken hands and feel the soft plush of the snowflakes as if for the first time. People with bullet holes in their chests look up at unfamiliar ceilings and wonder how on Earth that mysterious stain got in that exact spot. Sufferers of old age, after having their long lives flash before their eyes, will look at their children's faces in a way they never had before: with contempt, because the offspring get to live while the wisdom of experience fades away, and why the hell should that be the case?

People live and people die, so is the cycle of life. But the intensity of death is overlooked by the living. Everyone expects their demise to be fleeting and painless and unembraced, but that is never the case.

It is true, what people say, that death operates in a different timeline. Everything is felt on a much grander scale, with every cell of being, and therefore, everything seems to take twice as long. Yes, that includes pain, but that is nothing compared to the emotion that floods the dying cells of a human body. Everything one has ever felt is brought back in an instant. True love, true loss. Memories that have long been forgotten flit before one's eyes as brain cells wither and die. It is all felt so internally. The pain of not doing the things one wanted to do, the regrets of doing some things that one really should not have done, the joys of all the random chances that one pounced upon in life that turned into successes.

Every single experience of an entire life is crammed into a tiny couple of seconds, overwhelming the body, making it nearly impossible to move or to make a sound. Live wires run through the nerves as every sensation is brought back anew.

Then suddenly, all that feeling goes away, and in one's last moments, they are left with nothing, simply nothing but utter quiet. Silence. A complete absence of inward sensation that, logically, forces the body to look outward for the contents of its final thought, its final touch.

Broken hands feel the cold of the snow, and with nothing hindering it, that cold is unbearable. Amazing and pure, but also simply horrid. Wandering, fading eyes lock on that stain in the ceiling and feel as if they can zoom in on it, unlock its history, and with no other thoughts clouding the image of that simple water stain, uncovering the secrets of its appearance seems like the most important thing in the world. Elderly, dying minds look at their children and that contempt jumps in their hearts. Without the memory of love, those minds feel that contempt in a way that is nothing short of utter hatred. Last moments are not filled with jumbled forevers, but with single, strong sensations.

Death amplifies. It is not glamorous. But it is, inarguably, pure.

Henry Morgan had felt that unadulterated emotion a thousand times over, and no matter how many times that last feeling was felt, it was never dulled. And it was terrifying.

He had a practice of looking through his journal of his various deaths and remembering them. Not how it felt to be shot or hanged or skinned alive, but how it felt to experience that last shred of humanity, that last intimacy of what it was truly like to be focused on one thing.

Henry remembered them all. They would flash before his eyes as he flipped the pages of his journal. Bubbles in the water. Dust in the air. The scent of grass. The utter glory of a sunrise.

He could revisit them all briefly. But they were never the same. They were always dulled somehow, by his current thoughts and smells and sights.

The doctor was glad for that. Last moments were the things that frightened him most about death. There is nothing quite like feeling without boundaries. It is the true sense of vulnerability. Felt one time, it could be amazing and even enjoyable. But waking up from that was terrible. Henry could always recall the feeling of being completely overtaken. Of having all control stripped from his mind and letting the environment take hold.

Let's just say there was a reason last moments were just moments. And a reason why they were the last. They were bloody terrifying to live through, and even worse to have to remember.

Honestly, they were the reason Henry would often wake up wishing he could end it all. For good. Frankly, he considered mortals lucky. They stumbled around the Earth, never truly understanding the fear that _feeling _can cause. That death causes. There was a reason humans were made with the ability to multitask. And why immortality was not made to be an option. At least, for the vast majority.

Henry was not lucky to have to live forever. Not only was he constantly subject to the horrors of life and memory, he was forced to struggle through endless last moments, and then he had to wake up smiling, because nobody could know about his condition. He had to be normal Henry. He couldn't exactly call into work and say, "Yes, sorry, I lived through a rather traumatic death last night, I need a day off to sort through the most recent wave of sensation and unbearable pain."

No, he had to walk back into life and pretend like he hadn't just lived through the worst fear of the living. Like he hadn't just lived through _his _worst fear.

At least this time there was some mercy. It was an accidental death. His last moments would at least be a little joyful. With murder, last moments were absolutely terrible. He was always left to feel something terribly negative about the state of humanity or humans in general, or worse, someone he loved. If he fell off a bridge and was left staring brokenly at the moon, he would look at its white beauty and think of Nora in her gorgeous dress on their wedding day. If he was pushed off that bridge, he would stare at the same moon and feel unmatched anger towards the woman for locking him in the white walls of the ancient asylum.

Yes, this accident was a relief. No matter how embarrassing it had been- falling down a flight of stairs, no less- it was truly a stroke of luck, as far as death goes.

Henry Morgan, of course, was still absolutely petrified as his lungs fought for their last breath and flashed of his life flew by his eyes, his nerves on fire. Nora. Asylum. Medical training. War. Abe. Abigail. Adam. Antiques. Homicide. Jo.

Then everything disappeared, like it always did, and Henry was left with nothing. Nothing but an intensified view of Jo Martinez's hair, of all things. His best friend, besides Abe of course. In life, he had noticed her locks were brown. Wavy. A couple of highlights, perhaps. In the intensity of death, however, his brain studied every strand. He could see every one, from root to tip, how they feathered away from her face. How they were slightly darker underneath. He noticed twelve different colors in the thin strands. Twelve new colors Henry's retinas had been too weak to see in life, colors he knew he would never begin to describe, as they weren't anywhere in the living world. His soon-to-be-living eyes wouldn't be capable of forming the death-brought intensity they had now.

Henry remembered how Jo's hair swished when she walked, how it curled in the wind, how the tips flipped towards her chin when she hadn't had time to fix it in the morning, how it parted when she ran her fingers through it during a tough case. He smelled her shampoo, a strawberry vanilla type of scent- pleasant, not overpowering.

Henry saw life in that hair. No, he _felt _it. His eyes ached with the life that Jo's hair, of all things, exuded as light danced across it. Henry's mind flew with the memory of his partner's locks and of new colors, and of true sight as his heart stopped beating.

* * *

His eyes shot open as he burst through the water, burdened with strings of terrible, wonderful last moments. It took him longer than usual to catch his returned breath, because this time, all he could think of was Jo.

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_A/N: Thank you so very much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, even though it was rather plotless as a whole. Once again, I know absolutely nothing about death or what it feels like to die, so I hope you found it believable :)_

_Also, an idea sprung into my head as I was writing this for another Forever fic. It will be multichapter and have a higher rating... and more angst, which is my specialty :) If that's something you'd be interested in reading, I would really appreciate it if you would send me a message or drop me a review so I know whether to write it or not. Plus, reviews are the best way to make my writing better! :)_

_Thank you!_


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